Making Things Right
by Karu-DarkAngel
Summary: Tony Stark always finds a way out. "I'll make things right, I promise." "No, Tony. We are a team now. We'll make things right together."
1. Forwards

**A/N: I'm sure that the Avengers will have to handle some pretty crazy stuff over time, and this my take at what they could possibly have to face (with Tony in the main role). The story was originally planned as a One-Shot, but then it just got way too long for one chapter. At the moment I'm aiming for three chapters, with two more to go.**

**Disclaimer: **all the characters belong to Marvel

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**Forwards  
**

Whatever kind of stupid joke this was supposed to be, Tony didn't like it. Not one bit.

One minute he'd been standing in the lab, finishing the last touches on the new arc reactor model, and in the next there had been a weird cracking sound followed by an awful bright light before the lights went out completely – what shouldn't have been possible to happen, really, because the tower still had more than nine months of energy left. That meant that (if someone hadn't managed the nearly impossible feat of actually destroying the arc reactor in the Upper New York Bay) this was a prank. A really lousy one, because everyone and their mother knew that you didn't mess with Tony Stark if you knew what was good for you.

He blinked to adjust his eyes to the almost total darkness of the room.

"Jarvis?" as Tony had predicted there was no answer. Someone was going to pay for this.

Sighing he ran a hand through his hair and turned into the direction of the door, the faint blue glow coming from his chest giving off at least enough light to prevent him from crashing into any unfinished projects lying on the floor – though the concrete looked awfully clean and that engine over there certainly hadn't-

"It's him. Definitely." the voice was barely loud enough to hear, even in the total silence of the room. It seemed to come from nowhere in particular, meaning that someone was using the speakers from outside, meaning that that person was talking to someone in the room that _wasn't_ him. Tony stopped dead in his tracks.

"I'm starting to get pissed." his voice was light and cheerful, "And you don't want to see me pissed off."

There was someone in his house and they weren't invited. One part of Tony's brain tried to figure out how they had gotten inside the tower without anyone noticing, had come up to his private levels without neither him nor Jarvis noticing and had managed to cut off the power and catch him by surprise _in his own damn home_, while the other calculated if calling the Mark VII down three floors would damage the statics of the tower enough to have the upper levels collapse.

"Jarvis, lights on. Slowly." the voice came from somewhere on his right and Tony's head instantly whipped around to glare at the intruder.

What really surprised him however was the fact that the lights indeed were turned back on immediately – which meant that the tower was still plugged in after all, what inevitably lead him to the question why the fuck _his_ AI was doing someone else's bidding.

"…and who are you?" the _"and what the hell are you doing in my tower?"_ was quietly overlooked since the first would lead Tony to the second anyway. Not to mention that at the moment it was quite hard to sound indifferent rather than letting the boiling rage at being played like that show in this face or voice.

A crooked grin appeared on the young man's lips, "If you are really Tony Stark, you know."

And now the fucker was being cryptic. Just perfect.

Raising an eyebrow the billionaire took a step closer towards the other man, who didn't look the least bit intimidated at seeing Tony advance. In fact he looked a little forlorn standing there in the vast, almost empty laboratory – like a kid that got lost completely and didn't know what to do.

Their eyes locked for a second, brown boring into brown. The younger man's eyes were empty of any emotion, no hate, no anger, no hurt. (So this wasn't about some kind of revenge after all.) He wore a pair of shabby old jeans and a bland black t-shirt. His hair was brown and the longest strands tied back into a small ponytail …all in all Tony didn't find anything remarkable about the man. Even his height was pretty much standard though he was just a tad on the short side, probably something in the middle of him and his-

Tony's brain was absorbing thousands of things at the same time: the slight difference in height, the frame that was only a little bit leaner, the form of the eyes, the straight nose and the higher cheekbones… the many differences and just as many similarities.

"Jarvis." there was an edge to his voice that shouldn't have been there.

"Yes, sir." his AI actually answered this time around, and Tony couldn't really say if that was a good or a bad sign.

He cleared his throat, "…what year do me have?"

The silence stretched until it seemed nearly unbearable.

"I'm afraid I'm not entitled to share this information with you, sir."

For a second the billionaire allowed himself to close his eyes. When he opened them again he caught and held the other man's gaze easily. There was pain and longing in those brown eyes …a lost child for sure.

Another five steps and he was holding his hand out to the other.

"Anthony Edward Stark."

A genuine smile crossed his son's lips when they shook hands.

"Jackson Anthony Stark."

After that they just stood there, still holding hands – usually it would've been way too unmanly for Tony Stark to hold hands with another man, but this was his son and the implications that that thought had running through his head made him feel a little dizzy.

"I assume there actually is a reason why I'm here." he fell into his typical nonchalance out of habit.

"Yes." Jackson nodded slowly, "But let's take this upstairs. The others… there are a few more people you need to meet."

Without waiting for an answer his son turned around and Tony followed him out of the room and through the tower towards the top floor. He noted that the place didn't differ much from his memory and silently wondered if no one had had the heart to change anything about the layout of the building or if they'd actually turned it back to its original state for his sake.

They were in the elevator when Jackson started talking again, "The people you're about to meet are all familiar with you …or at least the older version of you. They… we miss you."

The implication wasn't lost on Tony, like the pain in his son's eyes hadn't been.

Theoretically speaking he didn't have any connection to this young man, his fate or his world, but the words still managed to choke him. This was his _son_, his son in his late twenties that had just told him that we was _dead_ – and it wasn't the not-alive-anymore part that rocked him to the core, but the thought that his kid had lost him probably at the same age he'd lost his own father.

"I… I'm sorry." Tony didn't know where it came from, but he really meant it.

"Don't be, Dad." and again there was this genuine smile on Jackson's lips. The love in his eyes would have made Tony stagger if he hadn't been leaning against the wall of the elevator.

The car came to a stop just seconds later and the elevator opened to the all too familiar side of his large living quarters. The furniture was different, but he had expected that much – what he hadn't expected however was the relative darkness of the vast room. The panorama windows were darkened and obviously blind to the outside.

So he wasn't supposed to see how future Manhattan looked.

Stepping forward to take the room in, he only became aware of the figures sitting on the couch when two of them suddenly came rushing towards him, taking him totally by surprise when they latched onto him.

"_Papa!_" before Tony knew it he had his arms full of female, two equally dark blond heads pressing against his chest and surprisingly strong arms squeezing him for all he was worth. He didn't really know what to do about the brusque attack, but this were obviously his kids (strange that he'd never imagined having anything more than a son to carry on the Stark name) and so he did what he was supposed to do and hugged them back. It felt strange but left a warm tingling in his chest.

"Anna, Sofia, let go. We just got him back, don't crush him to death." Jackson sounded annoyed but had the telltale glint of unshed tears in the corners of his eyes.

The picture left Tony with a sudden rush of fatherly pride he hadn't been prepared for.

Damn, he'd managed to raise some find kids (or Pepper had because he'd been dead to early, but going along with that line of thought hurt too much so he pushed it aside immediately).

They did as their brother had told them, two identical set of grey eyes looking up at him when the young women let go of him. They were both smiling, a happiness showing on their faces that left him momentarily breathless. God, his girls were beautiful. And they loved him. And-

…and he knew these eyes.

The thoughts were spinning in his head now, leaving him confused and raw and _hurt_ – because he was Tony Stark and his head worked too fast for his own good. He looked them over and he _knew_ it, he drew the conclusion that was inevitable. It spoke of death, of more people killed too early, and it reminded him that they weren't invincible. They were mortal, every single one of them. They would die and-

"Tony. Stay focused." he voice was quiet and controlled and he would've known it everywhere.

His head snapped around and indeed there he was, Bruce Banner sitting on the dark grey couch beside Steve, his eyes gentle and his smile apologetic.

For once words failed Tony Stark and the people around him seemed to recognize it, the twins leading him towards the couch and carefully placing him on a chair. Jackson followed and Bruce and the Captain just watched him, neither saying a word.

They were old (or at least _older_ in Steve's case). Banner's hair was grey, his face had more lines than Tony remembered and his shoulders weren't has tense as they had been in his timeline – but he was still younger than she should've been according to Tony's rough calculation of the years passed. The doctor looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. Beside him Steve Rogers looked like he could have been Bruce's son, his body not a day older than forty …so this was the price that came with the creation of super soldiers and indestructible forces.

"Get your father a drink, Jack." the words surprised him, coming from Steve of all people.

"But…" his son looked back and forth between them, "Dad doesn't-"

A sharp glance from the Captain made the young man shut up and Tony wondered what it was he didn't in this time. Drink? Drink when his kids were present? Drink in the middle of the day?

He forced himself to focus on the people sitting around him.

"What… this… tell me." his mouth was dry as dust and the feeling sent him back years ago, walking through a desert without direction, weak and thirsty and completely alone. A shiver ran down his spine at the memory and the only thing that stopped that line of thought was the cool glass that Jack pressed into his hand – he downed the content without even checking what kind of alcohol it was.

The liquid burned down his throat and gave him back a certain sense of _reality_.

"You have to read this first." his son looked almost embarrassed when the handed him a stack of paper. _Paper_, because data could never be really destroyed. There was no guarantee that at least parts of the original code wouldn't be retrieved. Paper could always be burned.

"You probably won't understand all of it. There's no Lyle Drive in your time and the theory about wormholes is shady at best, but you'll only need the rough function of the principle of time lines, the direction problem and the additions to the space-room continuum." Jack used the terms in the same way he would have, like they were the most natural things to talk about.

So his son was a genius alright – Tony couldn't say that he was overly surprised.

He made a motion to begin reading (cursing that of course his glasses were still in _his_ lab, decades away), but was stopped by a firm grip on his right wrist.

Jackson looked nervous, "You have to promise me something, Dad. Don't try to recreate it …please."

"Why?" the billionaire would've been lying if he'd said that Jack's words hadn't attracted his attention. Whatever this was, it had the promise of being very exciting. Time travel. Why hadn't he thought about it sooner? That was basically what Thor must have done to get from Asgard to earth and back. Damn, why hadn't he ever asked him about it?

A faint laugh from opposite him made Tony look up. It was Bruce.

The doctor shrugged, "I knew that you'd be head over heels into it."

"What did you expect, Bruce?" he gave him his best beaming Tony Stark grin, "Time travel? I mean that's like a completely new section of candy land opened just for me. Whatever the problems are, most of them can possible be avoided with enough power to stabilize it. With an arc reactor-"

Their faces fell all at once and Tony instantly knew that he'd said something wrong.

"I told you this wasn't a good idea. He's still too young." Steve's blue eyes were hard. There was no accusation in his words, at least not directed at _him_ – and that was something new to Tony entirely. The Captain for once didn't think it was his fault.

"You don't have the technology for it yet." those brown eyes were pleading with him, and sadly he wasn't entirely immune to them, "If you'll try it'll go wrong and… please, Dad. We need you. You need to read this, but used in the wrong way it can backfire horribly. I can't let anything happen to you."

It wasn't about what Jackson had said, but about what he hadn't said, and Tony was very well aware of it. There was a _"I can't let you die."_ in there. And another unsaid _"Not again."_ right after it – this was _his_ kid pleading for _his_ life, and suddenly the candy tasted very foul in his mouth. He hated it, hated every part of it down to the fact that his own child had to plead him to not get himself killed.

"No playing with cool future stuff until I'm old enough, I get it." he threw his hands in the air in a theatric fashion and felt everyone around him relax almost instantly. The hand around his wrist vanished.

After looking around to make sure that no one was going to stop him this time around, Tony finally took out the first sheet of paper and read. And read, and read, and read. He didn't know how long all of it took, but it must have been the better part of an hour.

When he was finally done with the last page he put the papers down in front of him, leant back and grinned.

"This", he tipped his fingers to the stack, "is incredible. Fantastic. I'm not even sure I understand the full theory behind it. This has the potential to change our world forever. Transport, weapons… there probably isn't a field where you can't use it."

Tony meant it. This wasn't candy land, it was candy world. The only downside he could find was that he wasn't allowed to play around with it.

"You did that?" he looked at Jack, who actually blushed a little, "That's genius. All of it."

"Actually…" his son avoided his gaze, "You and Uncle Bruce invented it."

Banner started talking before Tony could ask any more questions, "He means that _you_ invented it. All I did was getting you back on track when you threw a tantrum and being there to bounce ideas off of that you hadn't tested at the time."

He raised an eyebrow but then shrugged, "Well it's nice to know that I never stopped being a genius."

All of them laughed at that and it actually settled a little of the tension in the room. The silence was almost comfortable now, at least until someone spoke again.

"We'll talk about a few things now." of course Cap was all business (some things never changed), "Some of them you need to know, some we want you to know and some are perfectly irrelevant."

"And because I don't know the difference it will be really hard for me to figure out what parts of the timeline have to change, what parts can change and what parts can't be changed …thought I doubt you're sure about the last thing either." Tony understood the concept perfectly fine. _Safety regulations_. They couldn't just tell him what exactly they wanted to change because him trying to prevent it from happening would most likely only make matters worse.

"…I needed almost two weeks to get that." Steve sounded resigned.

Tony couldn't help but chuckle, "Still behind on technology aren't you, Cap?"

Grunting something unintelligible the blond fished a piece of equipment out of his pocket that suspiciously looked like an iPhone, ignoring the dirty looks he got from Jack and the twins.

"I guess that's a yes then." the grins on the others faces told the billionaire that he was indeed right with his assumption. The Captain just pouted at being busted – what kind of looked hilarious on a 40 year old guy that was all muscle.

"What happened to them?" Tony would have liked to banter some more, but he just _had_ to know. They were his friends (family, even if he would've never admitted that out loud) and it was obvious that they weren't there anymore.

No one seemed really willing to answer the question and he hated himself for digging up what had to be painful memories.

"Natasha? Clint? Thor?" he listed them one after another, and then, after a pause were his heart started beating ridiculously fast because deep down he was aware (but refused to believe) what her absence meant, "…Pepper?"

The silence stretched too long.

"Our father…" Sofia started but faltered, grasping her twins hand tightly before she continued, "We never met him. He died before we were born. He saved _mama_ on a mission in Shanghai and went back in to finish the job… but he never came back."

It didn't surprise Tony. Not in the least.

She grabbed his hand now and he let her. They had had called him _papa_ before and the understood – he desperately wished he wouldn't but he did. Decades later the five people in this room were all that he had left of the friends he had just seen being happy and _alive_ hours earlier.

"We were six when _mama_ died." a shiver ran through the young woman's body, "She couldn't go on alone. She got careless."

Another thing that didn't surprise him.

Pulling her closer let the girl (his daughter, blood didn't matter) lay her head on his shoulder. Her sister was more composed but the look she gave him was even harder to stomach, because Natasha had looked at him the same way too many times to not remember it.

"What about Thor?" Tony was desperate for someone not having died.

The grin on Jack's face was the best news he'd had in the last hour, "King of Asgard. He can't come down as here often as he'd like to do, but Tristan stops by fairly often to visit his Mom. Jane Foster, the woman he never shut up about? …yep, they have a child. She's still living here, but there was talk about moving to Asgard when her life on earth was over. But don't ask me how Thor is going to pull that one off."

That was a surprise, though it really shouldn't have been.

"Let me guess: Tristan is big, blond and too stubborn for his own good, pun intended." he could imagine the kid without ever having seen him, and that said something.

Anna actually rolled her eyes, "You wouldn't know. Tristan, wielder of the storm sword Miekka, half-god and biggest loudmouth of the seven worlds… he never shuts up about it, ever."

Soft laughter filled room. It was good to know that some of them actually had a more or less happy future ahead of them. It didn't make the deaths less painful, but it gave Tony the hope that if he'd do it right maybe it could be like this for all of them …when had he became such a helpless romantic anyway?

It became quiet once again and he was painstakingly aware that there was only one person missing that they hadn't talked about yet. Brown eyes met brown eyes once more and Tony Stark knew that he really didn't want to know what his son was about to tell him …he could listen to the deaths of Clint and Natasha, not because he didn't care for them, but because possible death had always been part of their job. Pepper… she'd never had anything do with this stuff. He'd kept her out of all of this as good as possible because he _knew_ that he couldn't watch anything happening to her. But it had – and he hadn't been able to protect her.

"Mom…" Jack began, slowly, with love in his words and tears in his eyes, "Mom was-"

He was interrupted by the sound of steps coming from the stairs and the angry grumbling of a girl that came along with it, "Jackson Anthony Stark, you lousy…"

The room froze and Jack broke eye contact, exchanging a terrified gaze first with the twins and then with Steve. Bruce was the only that looked utterly calm, something akin to approval showing in his eyes when he and the billionaire locked eyes for a second.

"Jack! You should know that overriding my access codes to the upper level is a stupid joke, especially when I-"

The girl stopped dead in her tracks and Tony stared.

She was only a teenager, a good three inches shorter than he was used to, and her eyes were brown instead of blue, but she had the same face and the same reddish blond hair. She… his daughter looked like a miniature of her mother, furrowed brows, puckered lips and all. (The face he thought he'd never see in this reality.)

For a moment nothing happened, but then the frown left her face and her eyes became wide.

"Daddy!" she dropped her bag and ran and he was up before he realized it, taking the last step that was needed to hug the child as tight as he could, slender arms returning the gesture immediately.

"Daddy, you're back! You're back." she held onto him as if her life depended on it, sobbing against his chest and staining his shirt with hot tears.

Tony Stark did do many things in public. Crying had never been one of them. He was a Stark, he never cried. Crying was for the weak, the people that became desperate because they didn't find way out. He had no reason to cry, he always found a way out.

So when held his daughter and felt the tears running down his cheeks he swore to himself that there would be a way out. He'd find one. This wouldn't happen again, not in his timeline. No matter the cost, he would make things right, for his children (all four of them).

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_I am neither an expert in physics nor in the theory of time travel, so forgive me if I made same grave mistakes._

_TBC.  
_

**Any kind of feedback is very much appreciated.**


	2. Backwards

**A/N: The second part. This time with a little Tony/Pepper fluff (I adore them) and a lot more talk about time travel. I tried to make it interesting beneath that much theory and sincerely hope that you won't get too bored/confused reading it... and thanks to all the reviewers. I hope you'll like this chapter as much as you liked the first.  
**

**Disclaimer: **I still don't own Marvel

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**Backwards**

The (now to him) telltale crack of the timeline opening was followed by the same way too bright light and when he opened his eyes seconds later Tony was standing in _his_ lab, Natasha and Clint both staring at him like they didn't believe what they saw – he could actually understand them, after just having appeared from pretty much out of nowhere.

"Tony, is that you?" Clint had his dagger drawn, subconsciously standing between him and Natasha.

He grinned, "It's standing in my lab, it looks like me, it talks like me and it has an arc reactor in its chest… so I'd say that it's a pretty save guess to say I am me. Jarvis, tell the others that I'm back and well."

There were a lot of things he wanted to do now. He wanted to hug Clint and Natasha, but they wouldn't have understood it. He wanted to make sure what the power level of the reactor in his chest was, but that just would have ticked off the others. He wanted to sleep, but he couldn't have even if he'd tried. He wanted to double-check the calculations he'd made to get here, but this was obviously his timeline so it was unnecessary. And of course he wanted to…

"Jarvis, call Pepper. On the big screen, let it ring until she answers." he strode over to the biggest monitor in the room, the others already forgotten.

"Done, sir." the voice of his AI was always the same, no matter the years passed, "And Doctor Banner is worried about your well-being, he asks if he should come down."

A smile grazed his lips (good old Bruce, always concerned), "No, tell him that I'll be up in the living room in a few minutes."

"Tony, what just happened?" there was that hint of steal in the Black Widow's voice Tony normally cringed under, "You _vanished_. And now you are back ten hours later and acting as if nothing happened at all. This-"

"Later." he waved her off and God he probably shouldn't have done it because the woman looked positively livid now. Provoking a master assassin was never that good an idea.

"Tony, what do you think you are doing?" his head snapped around so he could stare at Pepper in all her glory, her lips puckered, cheeks flushed from anger and eyes blazing, "I'm in the middle of a meeting. You can't just expect me to be there whenever you want something. The world doesn't revolve around you. Some of us are actually trying to get some work done here! So whatever it is you-"

"I love you."

She stopped dead in her tracks, mouth forming a cute O before she closed it and looked at him wide-eyed and stunned into silence.

"Tony…?" her face softened, the anger in her eyes being replaced by warmth.

"We're going on vacation when you come back to New York. I don't care where, just you and me and no one else. Maybe we can go on that Caribbean island you liked so much, or the villa in Spain or wherever else you wanna go… and that tower in Hong Kong will read _Potts_ all over it. Biggest damn neon sign you've ever seen… I'll get you everything you want… nothing will happen to you, _ever_. I promise, Pepper."

"Tony…" now she looked concerned, "You are shaking."

"Oh." he looked down at his hands that were indeed trembling violently, as was his whole body. Letting out a slow breath Tony willed the quivers to subside, "Sorry, I didn't notice."

"What happened?" straight to the point as she always was.

"I… I got a taste of the world without you."

"_The two of you always tried to have another child, but it never worked. You proposed IVF but Mom didn't want it…" Jack closed his eyes for a second to regain his composure, "She got pregnant again somewhere before my thirteenth birthday. The docs made it clear that it was high-risk pregnancy, but Mom didn't want an abortion and you could never say no to her when it mattered… Kayla was a preemie, but she was healthy. Mom… they couldn't do anything for her. She died a few hours after the delivery."_

It had rocked him to the core. Hearing from his son that Pepper died at the birth of their daughter… from all the deaths hers had been the most painful and he couldn't bear the thought of it happening again. It _wouldn't_ happen again.

"Should I come back early?" damn, he had to look like shit for her to suggest that.

"No." Tony tried to get back to his usual self, but it was harder than ever before, "I just missed you screaming at me, I guess. Don't bother, I know your meeting is important."

She nodded, still not convinced but knowing better than to argue with him, "I'll be back tomorrow evening. Don't do anything stupid until then ...I love you too."

He watched the screen go black after she had hung up.

"Tony?" the pissed off spy did look more confused than pissed off right now.

A grin formed on his lips, "What is it with everyone calling my name lately? Yes, I'm Tony Stark. Iron Man, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Get over it already."

Natasha shot him a dirty look and everything was back to the way it was supposed to be (everything but _him_). She motioned towards the door and he followed her and Clint up to the living quarters without any further ado. They were both too clever to be persuaded that there wasn't something wrong with him so he didn't bother trying to do so.

This time the windows weren't blind; the light of the setting sun illuminating the room – he had never been happier to see the skyline of Manhattan.

"Jarvis, coffee. Now. A big cup, with a lot of sugar." the three men sitting around the flat screen TV looked up when they heard him and Tony gave them a small nod before sinking into the couch. His two shadows followed his example, sitting down beside each other facing him.

No one said a word until Bruce sighed, "You vanished."

Tony couldn't help but grin, "No, if we're objectively correct _you_ vanished. Or none of us vanished …it really all depends on your point of view."

"Cut the bullshit, Tony." angry (and concerned, and even a little afraid) blue eyes locked with his.

"I kinda think I liked your older self better, Cap." it wasn't the whole truth, but he had to say something, had to order his thoughts, "I mean he was still bitchy but he actually acknowledged that I know what I'm doing most of the time."

They blinked, all of them. Well, almost all of them. Thor didn't look overly surprised. But he was a god who used a damn wormhole to travel form one planet to another and probably knew a way to revive the soul of a dead human in Asgard, so really there was nothing surprising to him in the thought of traveling through time.

"You were… in the future?" Clint looked kind of amazed.

"Yep." Tony grinned because Steve, Natasha and Barton all obviously thought that he must've hit his head too hard somewhere, "A little more than thirty years, I think. They didn't let me see anything outside the tower and no one told me the year, but it had to be somewhere between thirty-one and thirty-two years, thirty-three max."

"Are you sure?" Bruce looked intrigued. The good Doc Banner was almost as much of a science fanatic as he was, and there wasn't a scientist in the world who wouldn't have taken the bait when someone said they'd actually traveled to the future.

That was the critical point: he had to make them believe him. Bruce would've been satisfied with a simple yes, and Thor wasn't thrown off by the concept either, but he had to somehow convince the Captain and master assassin one and two that he was indeed telling the truth – their lives depended on it.

Tony took a gulp from the hot coffee that was suddenly in his hand, "I know my own kid when I meet it."

A deathly silence followed.

The others had repeated a thousand times that he wasn't allowed to tell his friends anything about their future lives (or lack thereof) aside from what was _absolutely_ necessary. Telling someone that they would die wasn't recommended, even more so disclosing the date or location of said event. It would inventible lead people to try to avoid that, what in turn would make the event even more likely to occur. They'd only told him about parts of his own future because they'd had to tell _someone_, and he was apparently the only one they trusted to understand the timeline principle enough to not fuck it up (aside from Bruce, whose not so little indestructible green problem had ruled him out from the beginning).

So the only things he could tell them to actually make them believe him were facts about his own future that didn't concern them directly. His kids.

"So Pepper is dead in that time."

The billionaire froze in the motion of the bringing his cup to his lips once more, his fingers losing their grip and the cup dropping on the carpet, the coffee leaving an ugly stain on the expensive Persian.

"You will _not_ tell her that." Natasha actually flinched a little at the venom in his voice. Tony Stark never lost control, not like this.

"Tony, calm down." Steve.

"That means that some of us are most likely dead, too. Did they send you to prevent us from dying?" Clint (too clever for his own good at the moment).

"Yes. No. Probably. I don't know." this was going way too fast for Tony's liking. He'd wanted to ease them into some things before explaining others, but of course they had to dive head first into this whole mess.

"What do you mean, _you don't know_?" Natasha. Of course, the woman was like a blood hound. Once she'd found a track she didn't leave it until she had hunted down her prey.

"Back off. Let him explain." Bruce was suddenly standing in front of him and handing him a new cup of coffee, before he picked the old one off the floor. He was calmness personified, seemingly not bothered in the least by their bickering …but having the Hulk inside you taught you that.

Tony was thankful to get some space, but he still didn't really know how to explain a principle to them that was surreal even to him – and he had compiled it.

"Thor." he locked eyes with the Asgardian, "That thing you used to come to earth with, _Bifröst_, most likely is what we call a wormhole on earth. Do you know how it works?"

The big blond grinned, "Of course, my friend …but I cannot explain it your language."

He nodded. That was as much as he'd expected. He had about the same problem. Once you'd a general grasp on the principle it was easy to work from there, but explaining the space/time relationship and how it could be used to switch timelines required a basic knowledge of physics three of the four people he tried to explain it to didn't posses.

"Okay, I'm trying to explain the basic of timelines to you now. Speak up if you can't follow." he especially looked at Steve, who gave him a dirty look, "It's… kind of a river actually. Yeah, that should work. Our timeline is our river. We can change certain things inside the timeline without disturbing it, like you can throw a stone in the river and it will create a stir but won't disrupt the overall flow. It get's problematic however when someone tips a big load of debris into the river. It will block the flow of the water and the river will flow in another direction …savvy?"

They nodded all at once and Tony let out a relieved breath. He could work with that.

"The debris can be called a key event, something big enough to change a whole timeline, but that leaves us with two problems: one is that we can't be certain what exactly qualifies as such a _key event_. A single stone doesn't disrupt a river, but what if hundreds of people throw stones in it for a prolonged period of time? Enough small changes can add up to one big change, while others might seem big to us but in reality are not relevant for the timeline at all."

"They didn't tell you what the key events are that need to be changed …or they probably don't know them at all." his science bro summarized (Tony always knew why he liked him as much as he did).

"Wait…" Steve held up both hands to get them to slow down, "So you are telling us that you met a group of people and they told you that you need to change things in this time, but not what things?"

"Exactly." actually he was a little proud that the Cap had gotten it that fast.

Natasha raised an eyebrow, "Why didn't they simply tell you what they thought needs to be changed?"

Even Bruce looked a little confused now, and Thor had stopped listening half-way in and instead turned to the mute TV to watch a baseball game with the excitement of someone who had no clue what was going on. Well, he was the least affected anyway, and the saddest part was that he most likely was aware of it. Damn Gods.

"It would've been too much of a risk." he fidgeted around with his hands a little, "I (or we) would've just tried to avoid the event altogether, and the more you actively try to stop a certain event from happening the higher the chance of it actually happening is. Some events are immovable in the timeline …or at least as immovable as time and space can be. It _has_ to happen, we can only change _how_ it happens."

"What you are trying to say is that we just have to change a few small things in-between and it will most likely change the flow of our timeline? …I mean so that the outcome isn't what you saw." he'd always known that Legolas was sharp. Maybe he should try teaching the guy the basics of physics in the near future.

"Why don't we just send one of us to a certain point in the future and find out what has to be changed?" the gleam in his eyes showed Tony that Bruce was very well aware of the fact that there was a high possibility of this not working.

The others however seemed to warm up to the idea pretty fast from the looks on their faces – he had to stop that line of thought before they liked it too much.

"It won't work." that got their attention again, "That's the second problem of the timelines: you can only go backwards in your own time. People like Thor can cross from one world into another regardless of the time because our planets have no direct connection in timelines. We could go to Asgard 1000 years after Thor's time alright, but we can't even go a year head in our own timeline."

"Why?" Tony could actually see the gears in Steve's head turning.

He chuckled at the image, "Rivers. When you put that load of debris in the river you know that its flow will change, but you can't be a hundred percent sure in which direction …basically every key event marks the origin of a new timeline. You can always go back in time because you knew what happened in your own timeline, but you can't go forward because you neither know what the key events will be nor how they will turn out."

"…and you can't find a way around that?" Natasha didn't look convinced.

It was nice to know that they trusted that much in his genius (that they trusted him, period).

Tony shook his head, "I'm afraid I can't. I think I tried in the future. I apparently had the idea of stabilizing the portal with the power of the arc reactor, but… it must've gone horribly wrong. It probably killed me."

"You're… dead in the future?" they all looked nonplussed at the idea.

"Yeah." it was actually a little funny that it shocked them more than it had shocked him. Really, there were metal pieces way too close to his heart, he drank, he smoked on occasions and of course he was in the middle of potentially deathly situations every other day. Tony had never expected his life expectancy to be every high in the first place.

"What are we going to do about all of this now?" one could always count on Steve to be practical.

He yawned, "Nothing."

"…nothing?" he hadn't really known that Natasha's voice could reach _that_ height, because shrill was just too girly to work on her, but obviously it could. Damn, that sound had hurt his ears.

"Nothing." Tony confirmed, planting his feet on the coffee table in front of him (he was tired), "Jarvis, order pizza from somewhere. I don't care what, it only has to be enough to feed all of us and be here in twenty minutes. I'm starving… no, we don't do anything. They gave me stuff to tell each of you, but it's still too early for that. I don't know… this conversation was probably enough to change a few events already."

"Aren't you being a little too casual about everything?" _that_ exactly was why he didn't get along well with Steve Rogers. The man always ascribed incompetence to Tony where in reality he was doing the best he could – he wasn't taking it easy, he just tried to not make a damn fuss about something that at the moment couldn't be changed.

"I just came from a time some thirty years in the future where Pepper is dead, most of you are dead and I obviously tried to raise my kids on my own while continuing to save the world until I fucked up and got myself killed, leaving said kids to fend for themselves." his ire was back in full force in seconds, "Now tell me _again_ that I'm treating this too casual."

"You…" realization flashed across the Captain's face, "are scared."

Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "I'm scared shitless."

"…I am sorry, I should have trusted you." and _that_ was why he couldn't be angry with the guy for more than a day. He always apologized, no matter if it was his fault or not.

"It's okay." a tired smile spread on his face, "I just need my pizza, a glass of something really strong and a lot of sleep …I'll make this work, I promise you guys. We will get through this and none of us will die. I'll make things right."

Natasha just rolled her eyes, Clint and Thor smirked and Bruce gave him another one of those reassuring smiles he had perfected.

Steve shook his head, amused, "No, Tony. We are the Avengers. We are a team. _We_'ll make things right."

…somewhere between sleep and waking Tony couldn't suppress a grin of his own.

* * *

_Still the same: I virtually made up the time travel stuff from my own imagination and hope that it sounds at least halfway credible. TBC.**  
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**Reviews are very welcome.**


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